In a heart-tugging twist that’s got period drama devotees dusting off their vintage hankies, the BBC’s Call the Midwife – that gloriously gritty chronicle of 1950s East End sisterhood, sparked from Jennifer Worth’s best-selling memoirs – is being hailed as the “best BBC series ever” ahead of its 2025 Christmas special, a two-parter promising more tears, triumphs, and tinsel than a dozen Downton Abbey Christmases combined. With the first installment beaming into living rooms on Christmas Day at 8:15pm, the show’s faithful flock is in full-throated rapture, flooding forums with odes to its “breathtaking” blend of belly laughs and gut punches, all wrapped in the fog-shrouded fog of Poplar’s cobbled lanes. “It’s by far the best ever TV drama series,” raves one devotee on IMDb, while Radio Times slaps a 95% Rotten Tomatoes crown on its collective bonnets. At 14 seasons strong since its 2012 premiere, creator Heidi Thomas’s midwifery masterpiece isn’t just surviving the streaming apocalypse – it’s thriving, tackling timeless torments like poverty, prejudice, and postpartum pandemonium with a delicacy that leaves viewers equal parts enlightened and emotionally eviscerated. As the nuns of Nonnatus House rev up their rusty bikes for one more Yuletide yarn, could this be the festive finale that cements Call the Midwife as Britain’s unassailable queen of the corseted chronicle?

Flash back to those halcyon premiere days of 2012, when a wide-eyed Jessica Raine – as plucky protagonist Jenny Lee – pedaled into our hearts on a bicycle borrowed from a bygone era, her starched apron flapping like a flag of fortitude against London’s grimy grit. Adapted from Worth’s trio of tenderly turbulent tomes – those raw, rollicking recollections of her real-life stints as a midwife among the Anglican nuns of Nonnatus House – the series didn’t just dip a toe into the Thames; it dove headfirst, emerging with a splash of salty humor and seismic sobs. Jenny arrives fresh from training, expecting posh private gigs, only to land amid a convent of caped crusaders: the no-nonsense Sister Evangelina, the whimsical Sister Monica Joan, and a sisterhood of sharp-tongued nurses who deliver more than babies – they dispense dignity in a decade defined by deprivation. “It’s a moving, funny, colourful look at midwifery and family,” Thomas once quipped, but oh, how it’s blossomed into a mirror for modern maladies, from mental health mazes to migrant miseries, all viewed through the lens of post-war pluck.

The alchemy? A cast that could curtsy with the greats. Raine’s Jenny was the spark – doe-eyed yet dauntless, her journey from convent novice to community cornerstone a slow-burn symphony of self-discovery. Flanking her: Jenny Agutter’s Sister Julienne, the serene skipper whose quiet command could calm a colicky cyclone; Ferris’s Evangelina, a bulldog in black bombazine whose bark hid a heart of holly; Miranda Hart’s boisterous Chummy, tripping over her own feet into our affections like a tipsy turtledove; Helen George’s Trixie, the peroxide peroxide blonde battling her own bottle demons with beehive bravado; Bryony Hannah’s Cynthia, all awkward grace and ginger curls; Laura Main’s Shelagh Turner, evolving from novice to nurse-matriarch with a violinist’s vibrato; and the menfolk – Cliff Parisi’s droll drayman Fred, eternally tinkering with tricycles, and Stephen McGann’s dapper Dr. Turner, dispensing dry wit with his diphtheria shots. Over 14 series, farewells have felled us – Raine’s 2014 exit a dagger, Hart’s 2017 hopscotch to Hollywood a hankie-heist – but the ensemble’s alchemy endures, a tapestry of tiffs and tenderness that tugs universal strings.

What elevates Call the Midwife from mere period prettiness to bona fide BBC brilliance? Its unflinching fusion of frolic and fallout, served with a side of social scalpel. Set against the smoggy skyline of 1950s-60s Poplar – recreated with meticulous mania on Nebulas’ Bristol backlot, where vintage Vespas rumble past purpose-built pubs and prams parade like perambulating parades – the show doesn’t shy from the shadows: thalidomide terrors in series three, the swinging ’60s’ syphilis surge in five, or the Windrush generation’s weary welcome in eight. Yet, it leavens the lumps with levity – Chummy’s calamitous courtship, Fred’s ferret fiascos, or Monica Joan’s midnight mischief with pilfered plums – evoking “laughter and tears in the same episode,” as one fan encapsulates. “A masterpiece of a series that tackles many issues that still concern modern society,” gushes an IMDb scribe, praising its “great delicacy” on poverty’s pinch, education’s void, and discrimination’s dirge. Rotten Tomatoes’ 95%? Earned in spades, with critics crowing over its “superb cast depicting life in early ’60s Poplar” – doctors puffing Players on pushbikes, housewives pegging laundry to the strains of skiffle, children chalking hopscotch on bomb-scarred streets.

The 2025 Christmas special? A double-dose of delight, split into two 60-minute morsels to savor like stollen slices. Airing Christmas Day at 8:15pm, it catapults the midwives into 1965’s festive fray: a Yuletide blizzard blankets Poplar in perilous powder, stranding sisters in snowdrifts while a mystery malady – whispers of a wartime weapon’s wicked wake – sweeps the slums. Trixie grapples with a globetrotting beau’s globe-trotting ghosts; Shelagh marshals a maternity meltdown amid the merriment; and a spectral storyline summons seasonal spirits for spectral scares. “Expect the unexpected – carols with a chill,” teases Thomas in a Radio Times reveal, hinting at “heartache and hilarity in equal ho-ho measure.” Returning roster? Agutter’s Julienne anchors the abbey-like Abbey, Main’s Shelagh strings the sentimentals, George’s Trixie treads turbulent tides, with Charlotte Ritchie’s Barbara twinkling in flashbacks, and Megan Cusack’s Nancy adding Nancy Drew-esque nous. New faces? A hush-hush helmer from The Crown’s costume coven, promising period panache that’ll make your mince pies pop.

Fan frenzy? Fever-pitch fabulous. As the Beeb’s longest-running drama, Call the Midwife commands a coven of 10 million viewers per ep, its Christmas specials spiking to 12 million amid the Queen’s Speech scrum. Social’s a sleigh-ride: #CallTheMidwifeChristmas trending with 300k tweets, fan art of Fred’s festive ferret frenzy flooding Tumblr, and petitions pleading “No end in sight!”. “One of the best shows of our time,” proclaims a devotee, lauding its “depth of human emotions, trials and tribulations, overcoming adversity, prejudice, social stigma, human relationships – the writing is superb.” Another: “Even though the medicine has been extremely developed, there are still people who are impoverished… This series demonstrates these issues with great delicacy and is so moving and honest that gives you food for thought.” It’s the very British balm: bonnets over ballgowns, community over coronets, a midwife’s mitt more mighty than a monarch’s scepter.

As December 8, 2025, drapes in dusk over Poplar’s phantom fog, Call the Midwife beckons like a beacon in the blitz: not just a drama, but a dirge for the downtrodden, a ditty for the dauntless. From Worth’s whimsical words to Thomas’s tear-jerking tapestry, it’s the period piece that transcends time – bikes and bonnets battling today’s tempests. Tune in, tissue at the ready: the sisters of Nonnatus aren’t just delivering – they’re defining. Merry Midwife – may your Christmas be corseted in courage, and your heart, ever expanding.